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Little magazines are back

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Re: Little magazines are back

#21

Post by drivers99 »

tolerance wrote: post #6

Today I had a bizarre experience. I went to a library. I spent a good 40+ minutes browsing through the aisles offering a truly intriguing selection acquiring a stack of books along the way and one by one I put each book back 20 minutes before it closed. A few of them were about how economically alienated Millennials are and why. One book with a broken piggy bank on the cover blamed boomers. I mention this because I d…

> one by one I put each book back 20 minutes before it closed

If your library is like mine, it makes more sense to put it on a "to be shelved" cart, because they often track circulation even by the ones that didn't get checked out.

I've been going the library most weekends, and one thing I love about it is the random discovery of things that isn't driven by a personally-customized algorithm.

(I suppose I just contradicted myself a little bit. They'll keep the books that statistics show people are interested in, although I assume that is not the only criterion. But it's still not customized to me specifically.)

> I don't wanna read about [...] Marcus Aurelius!

One of the books I ran across and checked out was a graphic novel (book length comic book) about Marcus Aurelius.

Re: Little magazines are back

#22

Post by sleazebreeze »

amarant wrote: post #20
VorpalWay wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't read a book multiple times, why not borrow from a public library (if such a thing exist in the country you live in)? Here in Sweden they are free, and you can even get them to loan a book from another library if they don't have it locally (though for physical books it will of course take a few days to get it delivered). Remote loans used to cist around 20 SEK (about 2 EUR), but is now also free since ear…

I prefer the slim device that keeps track of where I am in the book, has a built in backlight that is easy on the eyes and doesn't disturb my wife when I'm reading in bed until long after she's asleep, and that lets me acquire the next book in a series with only a little bit more effort than it is too turn the page, over the heavy physical tome that would tire my arms. I am a creature of comfort after all!

Many libraries have ebooks. I am familiar with the app Libby in parts of the US.

Re: Little magazines are back

#23

Post by ip26 »

yazantapuz wrote: post #17

I just returned from my mom's house. Visited her with my 4yo daughter. The house is full with old magazines and books, it's a time machine to my youth (and that of my parents). The magazines are full of drawings, annotations, etc, by me and my brothers... My daughter could connect with all that easily, we read together the same phisical comic book, she can see how her father and uncles draw on it just like her... Goo…

On the other hand, I have paperback books I loved as a kid that were my father's when he was a kid. I carefully saved them for decades. One more generation and they could be considered family relics or something. I quickly realized the flaw with this plan as I tried to share them with my kids, who cannot be expected to treat brittle middle-grade and young-adult novels as museum pieces.

I am not entirely ready to part with the books, but I'm also unable to bear watching them get thoughtlessly destroyed by my kids. Digital has made it very easy to get copies of all of them; plus others I didn't manage to hold on to.

Re: Little magazines are back

#24

Post by OhMeadhbh »

So I just spent a week moving 60 linear feet of books and I'm done with dead trees. Neil Gaiman has a quote that goes something like "Books are like sharks. There's nothing better at being a shark than a shark. There's nothing better at being a book than a book. But a Kindle can make a very reasonable replacement for a bookshelf."

I'm probably going to get rid of my dead tree books and replace them with PDFs or text files (thank you Project Gutenberg for making plain text available.) I am suspicious of the Amazon Ecosystem and find text or pdfs read on a modern tablet preferable. Do not get me started about epubs. How can professional organizations make epubs that are so wrongly formatted.

Which is to say... I will buy your print book, as long as it also comes with a PDF or text version.

But I am very happy to see there's a corner of the world where non-trash, non-ai-slop is still valued. I only wish there was a happy medium between printed books and non drm digital documents for litzines.

Re: Little magazines are back

#25

Post by OhMeadhbh »

amarant wrote: post #3
teeray wrote: post #2

> A quarter-century ago, conventional wisdom held that ebooks, read on electronic devices, would replace books made of paper. Until publishers thought “huh, we can increase our margins AND increase our prices too for ebooks?!”

I've made the switch to ebooks.i haven't yet had a problem with pricing like you suggest, but I have been a little worried about my library of purchased books might one day disappear since they all use DRM, and I don't really own any of my books in any real sense of the word. Then again, even that doesn't worry me too much, since I almost never read a book twice anyway. I think the only book I've read more than once…

Anna's Archive can help you out with that. Illegal downloading is your greatest entertainment value.

Re: Little magazines are back

#26

Post by OhMeadhbh »

sleazebreeze wrote: post #22
amarant wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer the slim device that keeps track of where I am in the book, has a built in backlight that is easy on the eyes and doesn't disturb my wife when I'm reading in bed until long after she's asleep, and that lets me acquire the next book in a series with only a little bit more effort than it is too turn the page, over the heavy physical tome that would tire my arms. I am a creature of comfort after all!

Many libraries have ebooks. I am familiar with the app Libby in parts of the US.

I've borrowed from archive.org quite a bit in the past several years. but it does require you to be online to read the book, which doesn't always work out for me. Also... Libby doesn't support my preferred 4 year old android tablet any more. I'm also widgy about the data they say they want to upload.

But it's a great option if you have a modern device.

Re: Little magazines are back

#27

Post by OhMeadhbh »

jszymborski wrote: post #9
amarant wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've made the switch to ebooks.i haven't yet had a problem with pricing like you suggest, but I have been a little worried about my library of purchased books might one day disappear since they all use DRM, and I don't really own any of my books in any real sense of the word. Then again, even that doesn't worry me too much, since I almost never read a book twice anyway. I think the only book I've read more than once…

This is why you download the liberated versions from Anna after supporting the author.

I wish more authors or publishers would allow intarweb pirates the option of no questions asked anonymous payments for the digital copy they downloaded from Anna's.

Re: Little magazines are back

#28

Post by OhMeadhbh »

throw5 wrote: post #15
bluebarbet wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that we never really "owned" books. Put aside the mundane physical object and assume that a book is a work of culture, authored by somebody else. What can "own" possibly mean in this context? You don't somehow commandeer its copyright by gaining an indefinite right to consult it. The words "own" and "buy" and "sell" are fundamentally ill-suited to abstract quantities such as knowledge and information and id…

> What can "own" possibly mean in this context? This sounds unnecessarily reductive. By "own" I would mean that I can re-read the book again and again and again as many times as I want as long as I take good care of the book and prevent it from disintegrating. But the DRM e-books can't be used like that. That was their point.

After moving my personal library this month, I think I want to copy all my paper books to microfiche. I would absolutely buy first run books on fiche.

Re: Little magazines are back

#29

Post by joelres »

I run a local print-only zine in SF called Lower Haight Local ! We print 1,000 copies a month with a local printer and have 20-30 neighbors contributing art or writing to each issue. We have a block party to distribute it each month.

I find that despite print no longer being the fastest place to get news, the physicality of it connects neighbors in a way online publications or social media cannot replicate. It’s pretty special - if you’re interested in getting your own zine off the ground or want to contribute, reach out!

Re: Little magazines are back

#30

Post by opan »

bluebarbet wrote: post #14
amarant wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've made the switch to ebooks.i haven't yet had a problem with pricing like you suggest, but I have been a little worried about my library of purchased books might one day disappear since they all use DRM, and I don't really own any of my books in any real sense of the word. Then again, even that doesn't worry me too much, since I almost never read a book twice anyway. I think the only book I've read more than once…

I'd argue that we never really "owned" books. Put aside the mundane physical object and assume that a book is a work of culture, authored by somebody else. What can "own" possibly mean in this context? You don't somehow commandeer its copyright by gaining an indefinite right to consult it. The words "own" and "buy" and "sell" are fundamentally ill-suited to abstract quantities such as knowledge and information and id…

This is about how I feel when people discuss "owning" games, and GOG vs Steam. It's just data, you can make a backup or get someone else's, bypass DRM if needed, and you don't own the copyright either way. Interestingly, though, when you apply it to books here, I feel shocked and even a little resistant to the idea. Mostly because of the physical object you say to put aside, though. Similarly to games, it would feel weird to say I owned an epub or pdf I downloaded. I'd probably say I "have" it, or "read it" or am "storing" it on x or y device.
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